“‘There’s a whale dead ahead. He spouted six times.’”
“The click of the camera and the crash of the gun sounding at almost the same instant.” The harpoon, rope, wads, smoke, sparks and the back of the whale are shown in the photograph.
I was wide awake at that and had the camera open and ready for pictures by the time we were near enough to see the animal—a sei whale—blow. He was spouting constantly and this argued well, for we were sure to get a shot if he continued to stay at the surface. The Bo’s’n made a flag ready so that the carcass alongside could be let go and marked. Apparently this was not going to be necessary, for there was plenty of food and the whale was lazily wallowing about, rolling first on one side and then on the other, sometimes throwing his fin in the air and playfully slapping the water, sending it upward in geyser-like jets.
“Half speed!” shouted the Gunner; then, “Slow!” and “Dead slow!”
The little vessel slipped silently along, the propellers hardly moving and the nerves of every man on board as tense as the strings of a violin. In four seconds the whale was up, not ten fathoms away on the port bow, the click of the camera and the crash of the gun sounding at almost the same instant. The harpoon struck the animal in the side, just back of the fin, and he went down without a struggle, for the bursting bomb had torn its way into the great heart.
By eleven o’clock it was alongside and slowly filling with air while the ship was churning her way toward the station. Andersen went below for a couple of hours’ sleep in the afternoon, and I dozed on the bridge in the sunshine. We were just off Kinka-San at half-past six, and by seven were blowing the whistle at the entrance to the bay.
Three other ships, the San Hogei, Ne Taihei, and Akebono, were already inside but had no whales. Later Captain Olsen, of the Rekkusu Maru, brought in a sei whale, but this was the only other ship that had killed during the day. About eleven o’clock, just as I came from the station house after developing the plates, and started to go out to the ship, the Fukushima and Airondo Maru stole quietly into the bay and dropped anchor. They, too, had been unsuccessful, and, we learned later, had not even seen a whale.
Before we turned in for the night Captain Andersen said to me:
